MUSLIM community leaders last night condemned a "military-style" police raid on a mosque in which two Afghan asylum seekers were arrested as "inhumane and insensitive".

MUSLIM community leaders last night condemned a "military-style" police raid on a mosque in which two Afghan asylum seekers were arrested as "inhumane and insensitive". The Muslim Parliament of Great Britain questioned why officers wearing riot gear and equipped with a battering ram had been deployed to detain a couple seeking sanctuary at the Ghausia Jamia Mosque in Lye, near Stourbridge, West Midlands.

Farid and Feriba Ahmadi, who are now being held at a detention centre near Heathrow airport pending deportation to Germany, were taken into custody at about 6am yesterday.

Ghayasuddin Siqqiqui, the Parliament's leader, said, "I don't think the police would have gone in wearing riot gear if these people had been taking refuge in a church or chapel."

Dr Siqqiqui added, "How did they dare to enter a place of worship in that kind of gear? This was very inhumane and insensitive.

"If they wanted to arrest these people they could have done so in a simple, quiet way, after seeking the co-operation of the mosque committee and imam.

"It is treating these people as criminals when they are in fact innocent people fleeing from a country which has been devastated over so many decades."

Officers forced their way through a locked rear door after morning prayers.